


The Black Parade

by tehkittykat



Category: Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010), Tron: Uprising
Genre: GFY, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 21:04:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehkittykat/pseuds/tehkittykat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tron's memory carries on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Black Parade

For the fourteenth time—though who was counting, really?—Beck checked on the condensed data pressed against his chest. The cube glowed on, gold light seeping out of the makeshift cover Beck made for it. The cube had been too bulky to carry any other way than by hand, and a nano’s contact had quickly revealed _why_. Inside was a wealth of data on the fleet that had descended on Argon. Troop compilations, loadouts, vehicle manifests… Beck had breathlessly started uploading as much of it as he could to his disk before running into a wall of encryption.

Lucky, lucky, _lucky_ that the Occupation had selected _his_ —okay, technically _Mara’s_ now—garage for this repair job despite the crew chasing Pavel back to Purgos. (Or, well, honestly, maybe _because_ the crew had chased Pavel back to Purgos. It was probably _telling_ when even your brutal dictatorship pals thought you were a creep.) Sure, he had to make sure to get the block back ASAP or he risked compromising everyone, but Tron could probably get the rest of the info and even if he _couldn’t_ it was a dream of a find. Giant crash-you army or not, there was a real possibility Clu could be taken _down_ with this data.

Racing, hopeful calculations or not, Beck paused once he had coasted safely into the garage in Tron’s base.

It wasn’t _that_ hard to notice the silence.

“Tron?” he called, clipping his baton in place and shifting his hold on the cube so he could draw his disk in a hurry. As much as Tron sometimes loved to be a bitty chunk of malware and ambush him in the name of combat training… there was an _absoluteness_ to the stillness and silence that made Beck’s render prickle. It _felt_ too much like following Cyrus through the maddening distortions of his prison.

“Tron?”

They had agreed no contact for a while. Not with the way the sky had filled with warships before the wreck of that crazy-huge recognizer was even cleaned from the square near the garage. Sure, the uprising had begun and Tron was _back_ , but even Beck had learned that sudden, stupid moves just got your friends killed. Or, with rumors of Clu _in town_ circulating, _repurposed_ like that creepy not-a-party Zed told him about on a long down-cycle when Beck was regretting his missed chance with Paige.

The point was, he’d _left_ Tron actually smiling and muttering about battle plans with the prospect of _both_ of them in the field. He’d looked _happy_ , if a little manic. So why the _glitch_ was the base looking like it had been abandoned?

“Tron, seriously, this stopped being funny a decicycle ago,” Beck said, and the smooth sharpness of his disk in his hand was cold comfort as he peered into what he thought of as the command room.

“Beck. Go.”

 _Finally_.

Tron was a dark shape against the dark of the Outlands beyond, and only a few small circuits were visible. He’d changed over to the ninja suit again. Those circuits, though… the white was dim, muddy, barely brighter than the foxfire glow of the snow outside. On anyone _else_ , that was a glow of critical energy shortage, but Tron was somehow still upright, pressed against the window.

“What’s going on? What happened?”

“You need to leave. _Now_.” There was a burry edge to Tron’s words, the same as the distortion from the helmet when they first met, but Tron’s face was bare.

Somehow, Beck had the feeling that redocking his disk would be a very, very bad idea. Instead he adjusted the cube again, keeping it braced as he groped for something to say.

“Not unless you tell me what’s going on. I thought you promised no more secrets after _Cyrus_ ,” he said, biting on the not-yet-healed ache of Able and that stupid, stupid chain of choices that got him killed. “Besides—I brought you something. I thought maybe you could figure out how to decrypt—“

“ _Don’t_. Don’t… don’t tell me anything else,” Tron said, slumping at the words, “I’m compromised.”

“ _What_? You told me you were—“

“I thought I _was_.”

“ _How_? When?”

“I don’t know.”

The _need_ to pace, fidget, do _something_ was strong enough that Beck set down the cube, turning his disk over in his hands as he walked tight circles. _Compromised_ meant he was, of course, basically glitched for gridbugs. It was a contingency he’d been thinking about, after Cyrus’s rampage and the renewal of the hunt for the renegade. Something that was inevitable, really, when he decided to take the disk back from his predecessor. When he decided to save Tron and trust Able with his friends rather than the other way around. He was always going to have to go underground, preferably before all the reds in Argon knew to hunt him by _face_.

He’d just never considered that _Tron_ might be the reason he had to hide. And—Oh, _Users_.

Tron _compromised_? Tron knew _everything_.

“All right. We can’t just wonder about it. It happened,” Beck said, mouth running with his thoughts, “We can find you a recompiler. Able had a lot of connections. There’s got to be somebody who can deal with this.”

And _crash_ it, why hadn’t he thought of it sooner? They might never have had to risk—or, really, maybe _caused_ —any repurposing. Tron’s injuries had been program-generated and a good recompiler would have been able to fix things… maybe even get rid of Dyson’s little present, _whatever_ that was supposed to be, decicycles ago. He never should have just assumed Tron already looked into it, especially not after Able had tried to give him that cryptic warning about… well, if he’d known what it was about, he’d know why Able’s words sounded like a warning!

“It’s too late for that,” Tron said, a faint hitch in his voice that had nothing to do with the distortion—glitch?—in the least.

“Look, neither of us knows much about repairing programs. Maybe it’s time to stop pretending we do and bring someone in. There has to be someone willing to—“

“I _can’t find it_.”

“What are you—“

“The source. I can’t find it. I’ve checked a hex of times since I noticed… _discrepancies_. I—All I can say for sure is that there isn’t much time left. Cutler, the recognizer, Clu’s arrival—it’s not _coincidental_. Whatever he’s done must have reached a critical point, and I’m not sure even Flynn can undo it now. I’m _sorry_ , Beck. But I should thank you, too. If you hadn’t managed to succeed, well, _despite_ me, I may never have known at all,” Tron said, and now he finally turned to offer Beck a weak smile, his eyes suspiciously bright.

“Don’t shut me out _now_. We can do _something_ if we work together. I—“ Beck’s voice broke, and he had to swallow to soft-boot it. “I can’t lose you like I lost Able.”

“I won’t ask you to derezz me,” Tron said, his voice surprisingly gentle, “But all I can give you now is a head start and whatever secrets you’ve been keeping.”

“Crash it, Tron… I can’t _do_ this. I can’t—What glitching good is being _Tron_ if I can’t save anyone?”

“If I ever find out, I’ll tell you.”

It was a terrible attempt at a joke, and the noise Beck made was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Of _course_ Tron picked now to download a sense of humor. A terrible, dark, black sense of humor that _swallowed all happiness_ , but if the only options were laugh or go buggy what else was left?

“Go, Beck. You and I both know what my first order will be.”

“I’m sorry.”

The cube. He had to take the cube. Get it back, make it look like it wasn’t stolen. He needed every microcycle, because Tron really _did_ know everything, and after all the times Zed and Mara had been in deadly danger he couldn’t afford to not think about what a _repurposed_ Tron might do to them to get at _him_.

“Don’t be.”

There was a faint flicker of orange in Tron’s pupil, a tiny spark that fanned briefly over the blue of his eyes. Clutching the cube, all the mechanic could do was back away, disk readied as he’d been taught, until the door to the command room slammed shut with an aching finality.

“Goodbye, Tron,” Beck whispered, feeling his voice glitch out again with the desire to _scream_.


End file.
